The thyroid gland is a butterfly-shaped organ that is located below the thyroid cartilage in front of a bronchial tube as a respiratory air way. The thyroid gland has a function of producing and storing thyroid hormone and sending the thyroid hormone to organs which requires the hormones. Cancers occurring in thyroid are collectively called thyroid cancers. The thyroid cancers are mainly classified into “well-differentiated thyroid cancers’ and “other thyroid cancers”. In addition, the thyroid cancers are classified into papillary cancer, follicular cancer, medullary cancer, and anaplastic cancer (undifferentiated cancer) according to a histological shape, a source cell of cancer, and a degree of differentiation.
All the differentiated thyroid cancers are treated through thyroidectomy after diagnosis as possible. After the thyroidectomy, thyroid hormone is administered to suppress thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), and the radioiodine therapy for full scanning using radioiodine and measuring serum thyroid globulin is periodically performed in order to easily observe recurrence and metastasis of the cancer. The radioiodine therapy has effects of assisting observation of the recurrence of the thyroid cancer, reducing a recurrence rate, and increasing lifetime of some patients.
However, the radioiodine administered into the body for the radioiodine therapy is also stored in the salivary gland and several organs such stomach. If the radioiodine is not speedily discharged from the body, the radioiodine therapy causes adverse effect such as salivary gland inflammation and radioactive inflammation of stomach. Particularly, the salivary gland is vulnerable to the radioiodine, and the damaged salivary gland is not nearly recovered. Therefore, in order to reduce the damage to the salivary gland caused by the radioiodine, it is important to remove the radioiodine from the salivary gland by facilitating the salivation. In the related art, a large amount of water is drunk or a candy or sour food is eaten so as to facilitate the salivation to discharge a large amount of saliva. However, in the above-described methods, the radioiodine cannot be completely removed. In addition, when the patient is in the sleep time, the above-described methods cannot be used, so that there is a limitation in effectively removing the radioiodine.
Korean Patent Application Publication No. 10-2000-0037266 discloses a salivation apparatus and method of manufacturing the same. The salivation apparatus is an apparatus which is fixed to teeth to facilitate salivation in order to solve the problem in the salivation. Although the Korean Patent Application Publication discloses only the method for stimulating the salivary gland located under the teeth, the method for directly removing radioiodine from the salivary gland is not disclosed. In addition, in the disclosed invention, since the mouth needs to be always opened, there is a problem in that moisture is evaporated so that the mouth becomes dry.